86 THE RING OF NATURE 



the cable tells them that England is warm and 

 vigorous with spring. And the people of the 

 village are perhaps impartial enough to think of 

 the unfeathered migrants, too, as something not 

 quite English. 



Every swallow and even every cuckoo that comes 

 to us in April comes back to its home. Comes 

 back to the parish and the field where it was 

 hatched, practices for the first time or once again 

 the home songs of its parents, woos its English 

 bride here that perhaps it never looked at in 

 Africa, and rears its English family here. 



Nor are these winter-fleers the tiny minority 

 among English birds that we imply them to be 

 when we speak of swallow and cuckoo as though 

 these were all. On the other hand, if the species 

 were added up I should not like to say whether 

 the residents or the migrants would be in the 

 majority. 



Among the crows there are none that go away 

 for the winter, though in the bordering family of 

 the shrikes there is not one that resides the year 

 round, while the well-known butcher bird is a 

 summer bird, and the woodchat shrike when it does 

 come comes to breed. The finches are an unbroken 

 phalanx of year-round residents, and so are the 

 buntings, though they all move about a good deal 

 within the confines of the United Kingdom. 



On the other hand, think of the tribe of the robin. 

 Count with the robin the hedge-sparrow, a very 

 valued resident, but you immediately cancel 



